AMD Radeon RX Vega shortages to persist until October

Here's some more bad news for PC enthusiasts hoping to upgrade or build a new system packing the latest technology. Upstream supply chain sources have told Taiwan's DigiTimes that, due to technical difficulties, there is an insufficient supply of components for AMD Radeon RX Vega graphics cards.

There is some debate about what particular component(s) and issues are affecting the output. Some sources say that the process of integrating high bandwidth memory (HBM) into the GPU "has significantly raised the difficulty of the related packaging process and hence resulted in low yield rates." Meanwhile there are others that claim the shortages are due to technical issues with Advanced Semiconductor Engineering's (ASE) packaging technology.

When quizzed, AMD didn't point to such technical considerations, but simply stated that demand has exceeded expectations. Of course a tech company would prefer to boast that shortages are due to it becoming a victim of its own success, and the unforeseen desirability of its new products, rather than some technical/planning blunder.

According to AMD, the current shortage should be rectified with quantities of Vega product expected to be pushed out in "the coming days," as it works closely with partners to address demand. That's more upbeat than the mutterings of supply chain sources who reckon the limited supply of Vega GPUs could mean shortages until October.

Nvidia Volta consumer launch pushed back

In a footnote to the AMD RX Vega supply issues news, DigiTimes notes that the competitive challenge from Vega hasn't been as forceful as expected by Nvidia. Thus, it says, Nvidia Volta-based GPUs for PC enthusiasts and gamers have been pushed back from Q4 2017 to Q1 2018.

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God damn, looks like Nvidia might start doing an Intel and reducing the output to manage a longer release window because of lack of competition.

I don't blame em, it's inevitable, why keep releasing gold if your closest competitor is barely bringing bronze. Just I'd gotten used to yearly improvements of 30%. Hopefully they don't go full Intel and give us 10% improvements and a slap in the face.

TunnahGod damn, looks like Nvidia might start doing an Intel and reducing the output to manage a longer release window because of lack of competition.

I don't blame em, it's inevitable, why keep releasing gold if your closest competitor is barely bringing bronze. Just I'd gotten used to yearly improvements of 30%. Hopefully they don't go full Intel and give us 10% improvements and a slap in the face.

Increases of +30% per year are not sustainable anyhow as they rely on either process improvements or architectural improvement, or both.

16nm look like it it will stay for a while longer and how many low hanging fruit do Nvidia have left? The already ditched most of the compute features from their gaming line, removed the hardware scheduling, increased the max frequency a lot. There can't be a lot left aside from 8-bit packed maths.

I know when some details of big Volta (GV100) were released a lot of people went into hype overdrive, but while GV100 vs GP100 looks impressive what seems to have been forgotten is that the die size went up by a third (from 610mm² to 815mm²). Now it is possible that for consumer Volta Nvidia might be willing to sacrifice some margin and release with larger dies but then again they do love their margins.

lumireleonFirst was the MASSIVE power consumption now is the shortage.

Apparently AMD has to source HBM2 from Samsung as SK Hynix have failed miserably and won't be able to supply it until the end of the year. Considering Vega was meant to be out late last year,it seems to indicate that the major reason for the delays is SK Hynix screwing up entirely with their HBM2 delivery schedule with AMD then having to try and use Samsung HBM2 instead sometime this year.

Here's an idea AMD, as you said your GCN architecture can work with both HBM2 and GDDR5, why not cobble a GDDR5 card together and get that out. What with all this lack of supply that there appears to be I'm sure it'll make a few $ whatever it is.

Edit: Having a look at Scan and OCuk they seem to have several stand alone V64 in stock. Obviously at over inflated prices.